Not earlier than 1900 — not later than January 1903

[EXTRACTS AND NOTES FROM THE BOOK
"LES SYNDICATS AGRICOLES ET LEUR ŒUVRE"
BY COUNT DE ROCQUIGNY]

[Not earlier than 1900 — not later than January 1903]

National Library
8°. S. 10562
(Library of the Social Museum)

Count de Rocquigny. Agricultural Syndicates and Their Activity.
Paris 1900. Price: 4 francs

Already in the preface it is indicated that "agricultural syndicates date back only fifteen years, and already their action for progress and harmony is considered one of the surest means of peacefully resolving social difficulties." (VI p.)

. . . . — "attenuate social inequalities" VIII.

First Forms:
"Agricultural Societies" 
numbering about
1,200
and "Agricultural Assemblies"

societies that organize exhibitions, award prizes, etc.

"Consultative agricultural chambers" [official institutions] (founded by law of 1852) never in fact functioned (p. 4).

Same p. 4

Influence of the agricultural crisis (p. 6): "it was necessary to organize for the struggle" (7), for lowering production costs (7), "to produce better and cheaper" (8) — unions of "medium and small" farms (7), especially medium + small — p. 8

Purchase of fertilizers: price increases (on small items) and falsification (p. 12). First step: formation of a union (March 1883) for the collective purchase of fertilizers (12).

Use of chemical fertilizers grew rapidly since then (13).

Out of this modest beginning grew an institution "capable of improving the moral and social condition of peasants" (17), — from cooperation to "mutual aid" and to "consolidating social peace" (p. 17).

Méline (Méline himself!) welcomed this "immense movement" (October 31, 1897, p. 17-18) — which pleases Mr. Rocquigny greatly, of course.

Two types of services: 1) material (improvement of land exploitation); 2) economic and social for the rural population.

"An agricultural syndicate may be defined as an association formed between agriculturalists, landowners, farmers, tenant farmers, agricultural workers and all persons engaged in related professions contributing to agricultural production, for the study and defense of agricultural economic interests" (p. 20).

A landowner who rents out land can also participate.

Objectives:

Example (Indre)

1) examination of legislative reforms and petitioning the government (taxes, tariffs, etc.); — 2) dissemination of agricultural education; — 3) distribution of agricultural improvements (fertilizers, machines and "all other means suited to facilitate labor, reduce production costs" (p. 24)); — 4) promotion of the establishment of credit societies, mutual aid associations, insurance societies, etc. (including offices of supply and demand for "labor"); [This is all about "labor".] 5) mediation in the purchase and sale of products, fertilizers, etc.; 6) control of deliveries to syndicate members or by its members; 7) all manner of advice and assistance in everything concerning agricultural production.

Better still: (arrondissement of Poligny)

"The syndicate will endeavor to make this profession beloved by excellence, which for centuries has constituted the principal wealth of the nation, to attach rural populations to their hearth and to the soil they cultivate, by employing all the means at its disposal to restore honor to agricultural labor and render it more profitable" (p. 26).

And the Count's note:

"...This formula was inscribed, as an essential principle of agricultural syndicates, on the panels that adorn the grand hall of the Social Museum..." (26 p.)

Number of members: from 20—25 to 40,000.... There are syndicates covering only hamlet-communes, etc., and all of France (Pomological Syndicate of France, for example) (p. 28)

What is the best unit? ... Canton. Then it is possible to form "one family" (30), a great rural family... etc...

Income: 
membership dues (mostly 2-3 francs per year, even 50 centimes), 1% from purchases and sales (1%-2%, rarely 4%) (p. 33) [normal source of funds (p. 34)], subsidies from various societies and the ministry, etc.

Sometimes dues differ for small farmers, workers, founding members, etc. (p. 34); sometimes (rarely) according to number of hectares (Seine-et-Oise, Marne, Gers, etc.) or size of tax.

There are syndicates with capital of 30,000-60,000 francs and sometimes even up to 100,000 francs, but small syndicates have very meager resources ("maigres").

Who comprises the syndicates? Chiefly mixed (= farmers and workers) in contrast to industry, where mostly — either farmers or workers.

"...When these syndicates are represented as institutions conceived in the interest of large property, one commits a gross error: their services are especially felt by small farmers, to whom they have provided procedures and resources they lacked, establishing between large and small cultivators a kind of equalization of conditions of land exploitation, essentially favorable to the latter" (37).

At the first national congress in Lyon (1894) Gréza said:

"What is the true source from which flow all the qualities of agricultural syndicates, such as I have just enumerated? It is, gentlemen, that, without premeditation, by force of circumstances, they are in reality mixed syndicates. In agriculture, the limit that separates the employer from the worker is not apparent as it is in industry. Between the simple agricultural day laborer and the simple proprietor, you will find a series, so complete and so well graduated, of mixed positions that it becomes impossible to fix the precise point where the situation changes and where interests can diverge. Capital and labor are so intimately united, their interests so closely intertwined that antagonism becomes impossible and the efforts of all naturally tend to the same goal" (38)

And the congress resolved "that the character of mixed association remains the absolute principle of agricultural syndicates."

Same: third congress (1897 in Orléans): "the recruitment of small farmers and agricultural workers should be particularly sought."

"The first organizers of agricultural syndicates very fortunately understood that, to accomplish a work of real progress and high social bearing, it was necessary, in the face of the divisions and misunderstandings too exploited in the world of industrial labor, to affirm the unity that reigns between the employer and the agricultural worker. To create syndicates for landowners, farmers or managers, that is to say for employers alone, would be to provoke perhaps the formation of agricultural worker syndicates which would have been opposed to the former, it would be to divide agriculture into two hostile armies, to organize war and not peace. The mixed syndicate is the ideal of corporate associations since, by its very essence, it is an instrument of agreement and solidarity and it prevents unhealthy ferments from developing among the men it unites.

"Undoubtedly, the relations that exist in agriculture between the employer or undertaker of labor and the worker are not troubled as they are in industry: but it was good to be vigilant that they could not become so one day under the influence of the empty promises of agrarian socialism" (39). (Understandable!) Workers are sought to be attracted — through assistance in cases of illness, old age, job placement, reduction of cost of living, etc.

It is true that mostly there are still few workers, but there are exceptions. The syndicate of the arrondissement of Castelaudary, with 1,000 members, has 600 workers (41).

"This fact demonstrates that among the humblest rural workers there reigns no prejudice, no mistrust regarding agricultural syndicates; it also explains the weak development of purely worker agricultural syndicates, their moral failure. And this is easily understood, for these syndicates cannot organize themselves powerfully enough to render their members the multiple services of a mixed syndicate and, on the other hand, relations are generally too easy between the agricultural employer or undertaker and the worker, relative to working conditions, for workers to have a real interest in organizing into special syndicates. By affiliating with the mixed syndicate and by therein solidarizing their interests for mutual support with those of other categories of the agricultural world, they raise their condition in their own eyes and prepare their social advancement. Besides, in many regions of France, property has become so democratized that no rural proletariat exists. One finds practically no simple wage laborers anymore. The agricultural worker, most often, is at the same time a small proprietor; he rents out his labor, but he owns his house and a plot of land he cultivates: he will therefore be able to benefit from the services the syndicate offers to small farming" (42).

Against G. Rouanet ("Socialist Review" 1899, No. 2)*

Three ideas of the new association: Cooperation, Corporation, Mutual Aid (43).

("direct heirs" of medieval corporations, 44)

Number of syndicates: 
1884: 5, 1890: 234,234 members (p. 47)
1893: 952 — 353,883 
1898: 1,824 — 491,692 
1899: 2,133 — 
not less than 2,500 
approximately 800,000 members, reckoning about 350 "on average" (!! ??)

(Social Museum): "General Status of Agricultural Syndicates"
L. Hautefeuille: "Yearbook of Agricultural Syndicates"
"Yearbook of Professional Syndicates" (Hautefeuille).

By locality: "They unite in a marked manner in regions of small farming and in the viticultural zone; regions of large grain farming and livestock raising seem less propitious to them" (53).

Cf. Pierrot ("Agricultural Syndicates". Paris 1894). 1893: 952 syndicates. 48 with 1-20 members; 174 — 21-50; 199 — 51-100; 195 — 101-200; 184 — 201-500; 77 — 501-1,000; 55 — 1,001-2,000; 14 — 2,001-5,000; 4 — 5,001-10,000; 2 — 10,001 and more.

Unification of syndicates into unions (central, regional, and departmental)

Central Union: as of January 1, 1900: 936 syndicates with 400,000-500,000 members, a monthly bulletin is published.

On the agenda of its meetings there also figures such a question: repression of vagrancy (p. 70).

Regional unions: consumer societies also organize mutual insurance, etc. (insurance against accidents), credit, etc.

Union of the Southeast publishes a monthly bulletin and "Almanac of Agricultural Syndicates of France."

Sometimes representation (in the Union) is as follows: from each canton a president and three delegates — 1 delegate from proprietors, 1 from farmers, 1 from workers (p. 88). Rocquigny stipulates: I do not know how practical this is.

P. 95:

Georges Morin. Agricultural Syndicates and the Social Crisis. Nîmes 1898. ..."to prepare an understanding between great Marseille industry and agricultural demands."

Rocquigny

"Central Syndicate of French Agriculturalists" (founded 1886) 6 departments (p. 117):
1) fertilizers; 2) rural engineering; 3) seeds; 4) various products; 5) livestock and 6) agricultural library.

(cf. G. Rouanet "agrarian party"*
(cf. "office of iron-makers"!)

laboratory
office
job placement
turnover from 1886 to 1900 = 64 million francs
1899 — 6 million francs

with Dehérain technical committee juridical consultation

"Economic Agricultural Syndicate of France" 
founded 1889
conducts propaganda — journal "Rural Democracy" (M. Kergall — leader).

Worked out a "program" (before the 1889 elections) — revision of the customs tariff, reduction of taxes and freight rates, development of the law on associations of 1884, etc. — this program was adopted by more than 300 deputies (majority), and an agricultural group of the Chamber was formed.

"Agricultural Program" of 1898: 1) preservation of the customs tariff; 2) "complete the deduction of 25 million that has just been voted until the extinction of the principal of the land tax, by application of the proceeds of the conversion"; 3) elimination of taxes on beverages and octroi; 4) representation of agriculture (as well as industry and commerce); 5) organization of assistance in villages with the participation of professional organizations and elimination of legislative obstacles; 6) elimination of laws preventing the formation of cooperative societies; 7) change of programs of agricultural education: it should be theoretical + practical; 8) "regulation of the right of parliamentary initiative so as to prevent abuses of expenditure proposals"; 9) "to oppose the introduction into our laws of any system of progressive or degressive tax, whatever form it takes and whatever the tax for which one seeks to introduce it" (author's italics); 10) decentralization (administrative).

(P. 126) "The Economic Agricultural Syndicate does not content itself with regulating the action of rural forces in the relations of agriculture with the public authorities; it has also set itself the task of constituting a league of social defense opposed to socialist-collectivist propaganda in the countryside. The journal 'Rural Democracy' valiantly endeavors to wage this good fight; the 'Almanac of Rural Democracy' applies itself to refuting the false promises that socialist congresses address to peasants, to demonstrate to them that, as far as they are concerned, the true practical solution of the social question is brought to them only by professional association, the agricultural syndicate" (p. 126)... Mr. Kergall endeavors to bring agricultural syndicates closer to worker unions in industry.

(P. 127) ..."The antisocialist program of the Economic Agricultural Syndicate consists in taking the opposite approach of the socialist current. Against socialist doctrines on the suppression of property, the abusive intervention of the State, centralization to excess, the war of classes, the elimination of the bourgeoisie, it opposes opposite solutions: the extension of property, the action of the State reduced to a minimum, decentralization, the union of classes, the bourgeoisie forming the general staff of free associations" (p. 127). Mr. Kergall — author of the "happy formula": "union for life," which Mr. Paul Deschanel in the Chamber (July 10, 1897) sang the praises of against the "odious formula": "the war of classes" and against the "barren formula": "the struggle for life."

"The Pomological Syndicate" (founded 1891), — of sericulturists, etc., — of home distillers, — of agricultural distillers, — of horse breeders (p. 132), — of producers of beet seed, etc., etc.

— syndicates for the destruction of May bugs (p. 141)... direct, at appropriate times, teams of workers in their employ for investigations on infested land...

— "Catholic syndicates" (p. 144) develop "union and brotherhood" (145)

"Purely worker" syndicates — for struggle for increased wages. They*) arose in 1891 (p. 147) among woodcutters in central departments (Cher, Loiret, Nièvre). The result was strikes.

Most woodcutters are engaged in summer and agricultural work (148).

*) See about them "Professional Worker Associations," 1899, publication of the Labor Office.

There are also worker syndicates in the south and southwest (for struggle for wages and sometimes to protest against agricultural machines) (p. 149). December 31, 1897: 13 syndicates with 973 members (Labor Office statistics), woodcutters: 38.

"The collectivist party flattered itself with the hope of organizing the rural proletariat for the class war by establishing in each commune a worker agricultural syndicate which, by agreement with (p. 149) (p. 150) the municipal council, would fix the minimum wage..." (Rocquigny refers to his book "Agricultural Syndicates and Agrarian Socialism," p. 139 et seq.). "Agricultural workers have generally not allowed themselves to be seduced by this prospect; accustomed to freely discussing, and in a spirit of mutual fairness, with rural employers the conditions of labor, they know that a strike of field work would bring them only misery: they prefer to take place in mixed syndicates where professional solidarity, so powerful among agriculturalists, endeavors to achieve the progressive improvement of their conditions of existence."

"However, one must not overlook, in a few small agricultural or viticultural syndicates of Burgundy, Morbihan, Corrèze and the south of France, organized in complete opposition of ideas and tendencies with other syndicates existing in the same localities (and which are not worker syndicates properly speaking, since they make room for small property), certain socialist elements more or less pronounced" (150).

"Many openly pursue the increase of wages and salaries of servants, piece-workers and day laborers engaged in agricultural work, and the union of these with industrial workers. They admit into their ranks only small proprietors who work with their own hands (151) and represent above all an organization of the rural proletariat seeking to ally itself with small property to enter into struggle against the interests of large and medium property. The union that these syndicates advocate — as a type of such a union one can point to the Syndicate of small vintners and field workers of the arrondissement of Tonnerre, founded in 1897 — is not the professional union realized between all categories of the agricultural world; it is a union of classes ready to march against other classes under the banner of agrarian socialism. Such syndicates can create great perils in the countryside: the best means of preventing their development is, we cannot say too often, that our agricultural syndicates should become propagandists of a higher economic and social state, for the benefit of the whole of the rural population" (p. 151).

Compare with us in Rostov

Book II (p. 157 — 249) — Functioning of agricultural syndicates — "services of a material nature" (Book III — "Economic and social services to the rural population").

(From leafing through): purchase, sale, processing of products, etc., preparation of preserves.

The syndicate of agriculturalists of Roquevaire prepared in 1895 about 400,000 kilos of apricot pulp.

Production costs — about 14 francs per 100 kilos. Income = 24-26 francs.

"The syndicate pays more than 10,000 francs in wages, which benefit, for the most part, the families of its members. For a month, it employs about 200 women and girls earning on average 2 francs per day" (p. 207).

Profit is divided according to contributions of apricots. (!!) Some syndicate members invested 30,000-35,000 francs in working capital.

Polemic (p. 208) with Elie Coulet* (and G. Rouanet**), who sees in this a concentration of agriculture and a tendency toward monopoly.

Purchase (p. 216) of a threshing machine with proportional distribution of costs according to members' sowings.

Improvement of livestock, restoration of vineyards, etc., etc.

Book III (249-390).

Agricultural education, experimental fields, lectures, etc.

Against Coulet p. 74**

Chapter XI: "Cooperation in Consumption and Production."

Proximity of syndicates to joint-stock companies:

1) In 1891 the founders of the Montpellier syndicate transformed it into "a joint-stock company with variable capital" (p. 270)


2) In 1896, the syndicate of the Pyrénées-Orientales established alongside itself a similar "anonymous society" under the same name (p. 271).

Consumer societies established by syndicates = joint-stock companies with shares, for example, of 50 francs (p. 275, same: p. 278) — 100 francs (p. 281) etc.

"cooperative production" = the establishment by syndicates of mills, dairy, cheese-making factories etc. (p. 294), distilleries (p. 294), canning factories (p. 295)

N.B. See de Rocquigny: "Production Cooperation in Agriculture". Paris 1896. Labor Office⁵.

Chapter XII. Agricultural credit. (p. 297—)

"The agricultural syndicate of the Poligny district" was founded in 1884. In 1885 it organized the first institution of agricultural credit in France ("in the form of an anonymous society with variable capital", p. 298): capital = 20,000 francs = 40 shares of 500 francs at 3% interest. This same = savings bank.

Loans are given only for the purchase of seeds, livestock, fertilizers, or agricultural implements. Maximum = 600 francs.

Furthermore, "rural banks... are... partnerships with variable capital."

...fire insurance (p. 322—)... ("mutualism")
» — hail insurance
» — livestock plague insurance (50 societies joined together. 4,846 members insured livestock for more than 5 million francs (p. 337) [Hence, on average more than 1,000 francs each!]; by February 1, 1900, 64 societies: 5,980 members insured livestock for 6,115,000 francs (p. 337)).

accident insurance

"Orléanaise solidarity" (founded 1891). In 1897 it covered an area of 50,000 hectares (a fee of 0.50 francs per hectare is collected) and grouped around 800 members (p. 346). Therefore, 50,000:800 = 62 hectares on average per 1 member??

SUMMARY AND EXCERPTS FROM THE BOOK BY DE ROCQUIGNY


Chapter XIV.

"Foresight and assistance" mutual aid funds (chiefly for cases of illness)
» » funerals
» » old age

Bureau for finding employment.

Conciliation boards.

The matter of "bringing classes together" (p. 381). One peasant said to Monsieur de Gailhard-Bancel: "We like to see it, your château, it's our star!" (p. 389)

From the Conclusion:

Large landowners — no more than 5% of all members (Paul Deschanel) p. 392. Of 850,000 united agriculturalists, no more than 4,000 possess more than 100 hectares (M. Le Trésor de la Rocque) — p. 393. In the syndicate of the Lower Pyrenees, of 5,500 members — 26 possess more than 100 hectares (p. 393).

Therefore, the socialists—"detractors of agricultural syndicates" are wrong.

¹ The approximate date has been established on the following grounds. The date of publication of Rocquigny's book is 1900. Lenin read it, wrote this summary and made excerpts before delivering a report in Paris in early March 1903. In preparing for the report, he drew upon Rocquigny's book as material he had already studied (see "Lenin Miscellany" XIX, 254, 261).

² The full title of the book: Library of the Social Museum. "Agricultural syndicates and their work". By Count de Rocquigny, delegate to the Agricultural Department of the Social Museum. A work crowned by the French Academy. Paris 1900.

³ "Comices agricoles" ("Agricultural gatherings") — these are associations of farmers and agriculturalists, aimed at promoting agricultural progress. They differ from "Sociétés d'agriculture" ("Agricultural societies") in that they are concerned with the practical application of verified results from theoretical work on questions of agriculture, which is conducted in "Sociétés d'agriculture." In "Comices agricoles," landowners, farmers, and settlers (tenant farmers ["colons"]) may participate. Territorially, these associations cover from a single canton to an entire district. They organize competitions, award prizes and other rewards for all kinds of improvements in agriculture.

⁴ The text underlined (in italics) by Lenin in Rocquigny's book corresponds to text at the end of page 33, and on page 34 is found the text corresponding to Lenin's subsequent note.

⁵ The full title of Rocquigny's work: "Production Cooperation in Agriculture, Agricultural Syndicates and Cooperative Societies (on the commission of the Labor Office)". Paris 1896.
